D&D 5E The Decrease in Desire for Magic in D&D

[tetrasodium]

All the old "Magic is rare. The PCs are special" settings had potions and wands of CLW all over the place and magic equipment at every turn.

And all the evil humaniods had shamans, witchdoctors and cleric.


That's still sorta magical is it not?

Does D&D not have doctors and physicians? Or only alchemists and herbalists?

Dr Buzz Lightyear: Years of academy training wasted!

Also magewrights who spent years learning basic medicine type ritual magic to diagnose and treat things like broken bones and food poisoning maybe up to a bad cold or pneumonia

 

[Minigiant]

What other non-subjective sources are there?

Exclusivity: Magic is the only way to Do X. I think "Magic does the mundane faster" is one source of the specialness being gutted from magic.

Reliability: Magic is able to dothe unreliable reliability or increases reliability.

No Setup: Stage Magic is mundane. It just requires a set up and the set up is kept secret.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Just to add. Do people seriously track things like torches and water and food in their DnD games? Other than some rare occurances, it just hasn’t happened for me.

I do all the time. I've nerfed light and goodberry for exactly that reason.

While I would love to do a low magic game, I wonder how much of that is being a dm. Players want to do funky stuff. I swing my sword or I check for traps gets pretty old after twenty or thirty years.

It is the stakes involved when you swing your sword or check for traps that is the exciting part IME.

 

[Hussar]

He was asking:

When should the ranger, the class known for it's amazing exploration and survival skills, be able to replicate the effects of a 3rd level (near free resource usage) spell?

Tiny Hut.

If the answer really is never, that's just overpowered! Maybe the spell is a problem?

It certainly takes a big portion of the ranger's schtick and laughs at it

This is basically the entire argument in a nutshell. If we refuse to allow mundane skill use to compete with even fairly low level spell (and yup, a 3rd level spell is a pretty low level spell), then there's just no way we can have a low magic D&D. Full stop. It's just not possible.

Why on earth would a player want to play D&D in a game where my maximum character effectiveness is limited to what a 3rd level caster could do? That's the whole thing right there. Until such time as we can jettison this idea that magic is ALWAYS better than anything anyone could learn to do, then there's zero reason for any player to actually want to play anything other than a magic user of some sort.

 

[Hussar]

I do all the time. I've nerfed light and goodberry for exactly that reason.


It is the stakes involved when you swing your sword or check for traps that is the exciting part IME.

What stakes? I might take some damage or get hit with a trap? How is that any different from the stakes from when I use a spell to attack something or learn information? The stakes are exactly the same. If I cast Sacred Flame at something or I hit it with my mace (as a cleric), what's the difference? Other than the fact that the Sacred Flame will probably be a better choice after about 5th level because my cleric will never be a very good melee character.

What stakes change if I check for traps as a rogue or I use Mage Hand to set off traps from a distance? It's exactly the same stakes.

Like I said above, so long as mundane character can never, EVER be as good as casters, then there's no reason for a player to play a mundane character.

 

[DEFCON 1]

All in all though, the most frustrating thing is, D&D CAN do low magic games. 4e showed that it could do it quite easily and a ton of fun too. No magic, no special effects, heck, nothing you wouldn't see in a Jason Statham action flick. Just straight up. Didn't need any special rules or anything. It just worked. So, yeah, it's kinda disappointing that we took a direction with 5e that said that the group will need one serious SFX budget if you were to bring this to screen.

For the most part I can agree conceptually what you are stating here and for you and probably others it works. But I'll say this for me personally... because all classes in 4E were on the AEDU format and all powers encompassed the exact same suite of grid tactics (adjacent damage, blast damage, burst damage, pushing, pulling, marking, knocking prone etc. etc.)... any so-called "non-magical" classes in the Martial power source did almost the exact same kinds of grid tactic actions that the so-called "magical" classes did.

Which means that at least for me I never felt any real difference between magical and non-magical powers other than the Martial power source not having ranged burst (AoE) attacks. Everything was just 'Move here, attack this/these creatures here, move those creatures over there, shift here' and so forth. None of it felt really different, even though we were supposed to identify certain ones as "maneuvers" and others as "prayers" or "spells". "Low-magic" campaigns and "High magic" campaigns did not exist as separate things, because for me the tactical board game felt the same both ways at the same time.

I do not doubt that other people did indeed conceive all of these powers differently and actually felt like maneuvers were different from prayers were different from spells. But unfortunately some of the rest of us did not. And that's possibly one of the reason why 4E maybe ended up being more divisive in certain circles than I bet anyone thought it originally was going to be and perhaps trying to recapture some of that 4E essence in 5E wouldn't actually solve the problems that people might think it would? (And not suggesting that's what I think you are saying, because I know you're not making that case.)

 

[tetrasodium]

He was asking:

When should the ranger, the class known for it's amazing exploration and survival skills, be able to replicate the effects of a 3rd level (near free resource usage) spell?

Tiny Hut.

If the answer really is never, that's just overpowered! Maybe the spell is a problem?

It certainly takes a big portion of the ranger's schtick and laughs at it

I think I've been pretty clear about Tiny hut being crazy as written but I want to be clear. The ranger ability asked about os dramatically far beyond it. Tony hut may not have good counters for the gm to have monsters & the environment to use but the "mundane" can't be entered can't be "visually detected" it more like demiplane except less sccesssble.

It's not about magic vrs mundane though, replacing one of the multiple (and not all magical) pillar obliviating abilities with yet another even more powerful clonestamped one just to say that it's not done with magic is a design approach that is even worse than the one that created so many of the problems discussed in this thread. It's also the approach that led to ranger itself having abilities that obliviate it's own niche from relevance at the table with "no we ignore it" solutions if they would ever come up. .

 

[Cadence]

For the most part I can agree conceptually what you are stating here and for you and probably others it works. But I'll say this for me personally... because all classes in 4E were on the AEDU format and all powers encompassed the exact same suite of grid tactics (adjacent damage, blast damage, burst damage, pushing, pulling, marking, knocking prone etc. etc.)... any so-called "non-magical" classes in the Martial power source did almost the exact same kinds of grid tactic actions that the so-called "magical" classes did.

Which means that at least for me I never felt any real difference between magical and non-magical powers other than the Martial power source not having ranged burst (AoE) attacks. Everything was just 'Move here, attack this/these creatures here, move those creatures over there, shift here' and so forth. None of it felt really different, even though we were supposed to identify certain ones as "maneuvers" and others as "prayers" or "spells". "Low-magic" campaigns and "High magic" campaigns did not exist as separate things, because for me the tactical board game felt the same both ways at the same time.

I do not doubt that other people did indeed conceive all of these powers differently and actually felt like maneuvers were different from prayers were different from spells. But unfortunately some of the rest of us did not. And that's possibly one of the reason why 4E maybe ended up being more divisive in certain circles than I bet anyone thought it originally was going to be and perhaps trying to recapture some of that 4E essence in 5E wouldn't actually solve the problems that people might think it would? (And not suggesting that's what I think you are saying, because I know you're not making that case.)

Thank you. I had an idea for a thread about Skins, Descriptions, and Narrations in games and how it made different folks feel about games.

Do little kids envision the different candy landmarks in Candyland or go woosh when they go down slides in Chutes and Ladders? Do any adults? Does anyone make moves in Chess because knight sounds cooler than bishop? If there are multiple versions of Monopoly or Munchkin in a house, why is one picked over another? Themes don't seem important in many games with standard decks of cards as opposed to mechanics. Do some folks avoid playing certain things in MtG (demons? priests? cats?) because they don't like them as a theme regardless of the effect in game? Do some play certain things in MtG because of the story theme? Will universes beyond change that for a lot of people? Does it matter if Ticket to Ride is about trains or highways or power grids or alliances for most players at first? Later on? How important is the theme to a Euro-game for selling it over the gameplay itself? Is it in movies and plays too - Seven Samurai vs Magnificent Seven, or retheming the consuming and scenery in Shakespeare?

For D&D, does the importance of these at first relate to how things match the books and movies that have inspired each individual person? Does it become more/less important over time? For D&D, how important are the differences in powers and mechanics between classes go for some people to reinforcing the theme, and how much is the theme an impediment to getting the effects they want?

i'm not sure, but the question was rolling around in my brain.

 

[Garthanos]

Do some play certain things in MtG because of the story theme?

i'm not sure, but the question was rolling around in my brain.

Yes theme decks were the mainstay of myself and many others I played with it was even often a challenge to bring together the components.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Just to add. Do people seriously track things like torches and water and food in their DnD games? Other than some rare occurances, it just hasn’t happened for me.

One time it did was when I ran The Worlds Largest Dungeon back in 3e. Food and water were a big issue.

But as the pc’s leveled up and then died to be replaced by new pcs complete with equipment, a curious thing happened.

Every single new pc came with a ring of sustenance. After a few pc deaths and levels, all the food and water stuff just stopped being an issue.

Why? Because the players aren’t sitting at the table to futz about worrying about meals. They do not care. Not even a little. And the mundaneness of it becomes zero fun very quickly.

Same thing happened in my low magic 5e game. The players constantly chafed at the restrictions and frankly hated the campaign.

While I would love to do a low magic game, I wonder how much of that is being a dm. Players want to do funky stuff. I swing my sword or I check for traps gets pretty old after twenty or thirty years.

Tracking food and water (at least in the abstract) is a big part of Level Up's travel rules. That's certainly a type of 5e, or were you only asking about WotC 5e?